Question 3: Objective 1

$7,600,673.00
Fiscal Year: 2008

3.1 Initiate studies on at least five environmental factors identified in the recommendations from the 2007 IOM report “Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research” as potential causes of ASD by 2010. IACC Recommended Budget: $23,600,000 over 2 years.

National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Objective Cumulative Funding Table

IACC Strategic Plan Objectives

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Total

Initiate studies on at least 10 environmental factors identified in the recommendations from the 2007 IOM report "Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research" as potential causes of ASD by 2012.

Progress: There has been a significant decrease in the number of studies related to this objective.

Remaining Gaps, Needs, and Opportunities: Further work in this area is needed, and work should focus on identifying the directionality of associations between environmental factors and ASD (causal, reactive, or independent) in order to be applied to prevention and the development of therapeutics. Sophisticated methods that are being applied in other fields need to be brought into autism research.